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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“O trees of life, O when are you wintering?We are not unified. We have no instinctslike those of migratory birds. Useless, and late,we force ourselves, suddenly, onto the wind,and fall down to an indifferent lake.We realise flowering and fading together.And somewhere lions still roam. Never knowing,as long as they have their splendour, of any weakness.”

LongStillsTogetherFallForceKnowingTreeWindLateBirdWeaknessUselessLakesRealisingLionsIndifferentFalling DownFadingUnifiedFloweringTree Of LifeSplendourMigratory Birds
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Fig tree, how long it's been full meaning for me, the way you almost entirely omit to flower and into the seasonably-resolute fruit uncelebratedly thrust your purest secret. Like the tube of a fountain, your bent bough drives the sap downwards and up: and it leaps from its sleep, scarce waking, into the joy of its sweetest achievement.”

WayLongJoySleepSecretTreeFlowerAchievementFruitLeapWakingBentFountainSweetestThrustScarceTubesSapResoluteFigs
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.”

YearsHeartMayFacesDarkFailingTearsKeysMy HeartWasteSeasonsStrikesHeyStreamsSoilStringsShelterSiteUncertainAfflictionWeepingRadiantSettlementAbodeFoliageClandestine
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“Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.”

ShouldMomentsCareBeautifulArtistWaitingProcessCreativityTakenProgressConsciousGoldDetailsInsightTalesPainterFairyTransitionTransformedFairy TaleAlasDetoursAmbushSmall DetailsDetaining
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance.”

IfsLittlesBigsSeemsWinningNatureSimplePoorBehindsConsciousnessEasierIntellectLittle ThingsWakingMeasuringLagMarveling
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“This above all-ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.”

IfsShouldWritingTryingFirstsHumansMayNightAsksStrongNatureHoursLosesHuman BeingsSimpleAnswersDrawsAnd LoveUrgesIndifferentTestimonyEarnestAffirmative
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“My eyes already touch the sunny hill. Going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has inner light, even from a distance- and charges us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces.”

IfsFeelsLightEyeFacesWindWalkingDistanceWaveHillsGesturesSunnyInner LightSensing
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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